Renegotiating Family and Work Arrangements while Caring Abroad: Paraguayan and Peruvian Women in Argentina

Abstract

South American migrations to Argentina have increasingly feminized over the past decades while becoming the most active and constant migratory flow in the country. In 2001, the stock of nationals from neighboring nations, namely, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru, constituted 60.3 percent of Argentina’s migrant population (Cerrutti 2009), a trend that was confirmed by the 2010 Census (INDEC 2012). At the same time, almost 60 percent of Peruvians and Paraguayans in the country in 2001 and 2010 were women who concentrated in the “productive age bracket” (25 to 49 years of age), which indicates their readiness to work and the centrality of economic motivations for their migration to Argentina (Pacecca and Courtis 2008; Texidó 2008; Cerrutti 2009; INDEC 2012).¹ On the other hand, in the midst of deepening regional integration, Argentina adopted a new migration law in 2004 that grants nationals of the MERCOSUR² (Peruvians and Paraguayans among them) rights equal to Argentinians while considering migration a human right. Moreover, public policy fostering an “inclusive citizenship” has allowed these groups to access a multitude of entitlements (Recalde 2012). The government-sponsored favorable views of migrants from neighboring nations along with the social, economic and political rights granted to them during the 2000s is in sharp contrast with their criminalization during the 1990s by the previous government in office (Recalde 2006).